Smooching Meme
by Windswift
Summary: From a meme on Tumblr: Twenty-two oneshot ficlets based off twenty-two prompts for different kinds of Zelink kisses. Various games (including Spirit Tracks, Skyward Sword).
1. Then there's tongue (Spirit Tracks)

Disclaimer: I don't own _The Legend of Zelda_.

Pretty much what it says on the tin, this'll be a collection of Zelink4lyfe oneshots reposted from Tumblr, each one featuring a different kiss prompt. And hopefully from a bunch of different games! As I get more ficlets posted here I'll have the kiss-type and the game-verse in the chapter titles (who needs creative chapter titles anyway, not lazy people that's who, hence why this is a collection instead of a bunch of separate oneshots with real titles and real summaries), so you can browse and skip around if you like.

Geeze I wrote these all out of order...

**22: **_**Then there's tongue  
**(Spirit Tracks, when they are a little older, Link's facial expressions in this game tho)_

Princess Zelda smiles and asks him, once, if maybe his face is stuck that way.

Link blinks, and he keeps staring at her with that solemn and round-eyed face that only proves her point. She has to try very hard not to chuckle when his lips part and he doesn't seem to notice that his mouth is hanging open.

"You're going to catch flies like that," she says.

But Princess Zelda doesn't mind. Although if he really _did_ swallow a bug that would be gross. Link's staring isn't rude or impudent, because he's Link and he's always staring. He's always looking, or daydreaming, or sometimes his eyebrows will raise and he'll squeeze Zelda's hand, and she knows without seeing his face-just by the intake of his breath-that he's staring in open-mouthed wonder.

She likes that about him, and she slips her hand into his.

"Something really will fly into your mouth if you keep standing here gaping," Princess Zelda tells him, her lips quirking in a grin.

And then she tilts her head and leans in to press her lips over his, sticking her tongue into his open mouth.

Link's fingers tighten around hers, and he breathes sharply through his nose, and she knows that his eyes are as wide and as round as they can go. She knows, without having to slide her other hand under the front of his uniform, that his heart is pounding suddenly and his face is flushed and burning.

Princess Zelda doesn't need to see it, because she feels the moment his lips stretch into a stupid smile of their own and he kisses her back.

She strokes her thumb over the back of Link's fingers, and she's glad, because his face really is too cute to get stuck in only one way.


	2. Gentle peck (Spirit Tracks)

Disclaimer: I don't own _The Legend of Zelda_.

**6: Gentle Peck  
**_(Spirit Tracks, when they are a little older again)_

Link and the guard chat about the weather, and whether the spitting rain will turn into a real downpour, and how he hopes it'll blow over before the guard change in an hour, when he'll have to make rounds out in the palace gardens. Then Link chews on the corner of his lip, and clasps his hands behind his back, and rocks on the balls of his feet while he waits.

Teacher opens the doors to the throne room again and squints down the stairs for a minute before he motions to Link. "Come along, young engineer," he says, "the princess has granted your request for an audience."

Link follows Teacher up to the dais, and he sinks to one knee on the red carpeting before Princess Zelda's throne. Link has a dilemma, and Princess Zelda is his best friend and also the wisest person he knows.

Princess Zelda smiles and folds her hands in her lap. "Alright," she says, "I'll do my best to help. What's wrong, Link?"

It's like this: lately Link thinks he'd like to take Princess Zelda's hands in his own and kiss her, like what happens at the end of some of Niko's picture shows. So Link explained his feelings towards Princess Zelda to Alfonzo as best he could, because Alfonzo is his mentor and he gives Link lots of good advice about everything, not just about trains. But all Alfonzo told Link was to remember, before he even so much as thinks about doing _anything_ with the princess, that Alfonzo knows where he lives.

Link's remembered this a lot-it isn't that hard, given they both live in Aboda and it's a small village-but it hasn't really helped him yet. He's not even sure what Alfonzo's advice is supposed to mean, really.

Princess Zelda covers her mouth with a white-gloved hand and shakes her head for a moment before she says, "It means he's not nearly as retired from the castle guard as he keeps telling me he is."

Link scrunches his face up, and Princess Zelda quickly waves her hand. "Oh, bother Alfonzo," she says. "If he wanted to keep an eye on me he should have stayed right here. He can just mind his own business." She stands and brushes her skirt smooth before she crosses the dais to Link. Princess Zelda lays her hand on his elbow and ushers him to his feet.

"Do you know what I think you should do, Link?"

Link shakes his head slowly, his mouth a little open and his eyes fixed on her. He doesn't, which is why he's asking Princess Zelda in the first place.

"Well," she says, "I think you should forget what Alfonzo said and just ask her if she'd like the same."

Oh. Then-then Link wants to know if Princess Zelda thinks she'd also like Link to hold her hands and maybe kiss her.

She smiles and nods. "I would," she says.

Link looks down between them and curls his hands around hers, and then he looks back up at Princess Zelda's face and her smile that always makes his own face warm and grin back. He leans forward carefully and presses his lips against Princess Zelda's.

The guards stationed at all the doors break into sudden, terrible coughing fits as Link quickly pulls back, but Link doesn't seem to hear them. He just watches Princess Zelda, his face nearly as red as when he's spent an afternoon repairing trains in the rail yard, but without the sweat beading on his skin and sticking down his damp hair.

She grins, giving his hands a brief squeeze and swinging them lightly, and Link's breath catches a little as he breaks into an open-mouthed smile.

"Well, you probably need to return to your job now, right?" she says. "But I hope my advice helped with your dilemma, Link."

Princess Zelda taps their joined hands together before she slips her fingers out of Link's. "Maybe you could do me a favor in return. Could you give a message to Alfonzo for me? Please tell him that he really should be more worried about what _I'm_ going to do to his sweet former apprentice."


	3. Nose kiss (Skyward Sword)

Disclaimer: I don't own _The Legend of Zelda_.

**3: Nose Kiss  
**_(Skyward Sword, when they are bitty)_

Link is the fastest sprinter, so he's the first one across the plaza and slapping both palms against the storage shed to stop his face from colliding with the wood. Groose barrels into the door beside him a moment after. And shrieking with laughter, Zelda plows Link into the storage shed from behind anyway. Her elbow digs into his back as she grabs his shoulder, trying to get her foot pressed against the wood without toppling them both over.

"Nyah nyah!" she yells. "Cawlin's too slow!"

"You can't stay there forever!" Cawlin hollers back.

Zelda pushes off of Link and dashes away from the safe zone, and Groose takes off running in the other direction, and suddenly there's no one to hold Link up and keep him from tumbling to the ground. The paving stones knock the wind right out of him again. His nose is kind of running and Link sniffs when he takes a deep breath so he can scramble up and escape.

"_Onetwothreefourfive_ Link's It!"

He's too late and Cawlin's already shoved his shoulder and run off.

Link turns around and hurries after him. His nose is still running but he just sniffs again and grins, because he's It and he can't let everyone get away. Not when Cawlin's so close and Groose is puffing by the Light Tower and Zelda's circling past him to the storage shed again and sticking her tongue out because he can't stretch far enough to grab her.

Zelda slaps one hand onto the safe zone, and then she shouts, "Link's bleeding everywhere! Time out!"

Link stops running and looks down at himself. He looks at the dark spatters on his green shirt, and something wet and drippy is tickling the tip of his nose again, and Link watches another drop of blood fall before he presses his sleeve against his face. He tilts his head up to the sky so his nosebleed won't keep running all down his shirt. It's his favorite.

"I didn't do it," Cawlin says, just in case.

Zelda says, "Hey, Link, let me see."

Link coughs wetly and doesn't pull his arm away. He just watches the silhouette of a Loftwing and knight gliding past Skyloft, and coughs again.

Zelda scrunches her fingers in Link's hair and pushes at his head. "You're doing it wrong! Put your head down or you'll choke, that's what Knight Commander Eagus always says."

Keeping hunched over with his head bent does make Link not have to cough so much, so he lets Zelda hold him there. She grabs his wrist and he lets her do that, too.

"You have to pinch your nose. Here, like this." Zelda gets his arm pulled away from his face and pinches his nose for him, despite the blood getting on her fingers.

Link squeezes his eyes shut tight, because Zelda is pinching pretty hard and it didn't really hurt when he bumped his face into the door of the storage shed but it hurts _now_.

"Link, are you crying?" she asks. Zelda crouches down to look at his face, and then she lets go of him. "I'm sorry, I won't pinch your nose anymore," she promises. "Here, I'll just give it a kiss to make it better, okay?"

Link nods, and Zelda presses a kiss against the bridge of his nose, away from all the blood. It doesn't really make it hurt any less-although her not squeezing his nose anymore helps-and it doesn't make Link's nose stop bleeding.

But she sits with him on the bench and squeezes his hand instead until the blood stops dripping, so that makes everything okay.


	4. Cheek kiss (Skyward Sword)

Disclaimer: I don't own _The Legend of Zelda_.

**2: Cheek Kiss  
**_(Skyward Sword, end-of-game fic with a dash of prequel manga)_

About four steps out the door of the newly-restored Temple of Hylia is the moment, at long last, when all the adrenaline finally wears off. About four steps out the door is the moment Link finally stops keeping on his toes.

This is also the same moment he stops keeping on his feet entirely and tumbles to the familiar paving stones of the Statue of the Goddess face-first.

The fall doesn't hurt as much as it should, because Link takes out Zelda on the way down. She yells in surprise and stumbles into Groose, grabbing for him before she hits the ground as well. Groose yelps too, and spins around with his hands balled into fists.

"Just how many times do we have to kill that creep before he stays down?!" he says.

It's not Demise again, though, or Ghirahim or a sneak attack from the monsters in Faron Woods. It's just Link, and he feels kind of bad for causing all this uproar, so he raises a hand in the air to own up for it. He doesn't quite feel like raising his nose from the pavement just yet. He's very comfortable not moving.

Zelda has pushed herself to her knees now, rubbing her wrist where the bracelet cut into her skin. "Link?" she says. "What's wrong?"

She grabs him and turns him over, which is less comfortable because of the whole moving thing. She also yanks at Link's belt and seizes his shirt-tunic, mail, and undershirt all in one go-and shoves it up under his arms.

Link winces a bit as Zelda runs her hand a little less than gently over his side. His knight uniform's mail shirt has definitely saved his life many times over, not to mention keeping him from being run through and slashed to ribbons and poked full of arrows until he looks like Zelda's pincushions. But it does absolutely nothing to stop Link from getting bruised and battered and his skin scraped raw when a sword grazes his torso.

And Link is feeling a lot of those things now, especially because they are taking up the spots that used to be full of adrenaline and desperation for his best friend's life. Somehow all of a sudden he's tired, and sore, and come to think of it Link's not entirely sure when the last time was he sat down somewhere for a breather and ended up nodding off.

He's been kind of busy lately.

This is usually about the time Fi clamors for his attention, telling him to find a place to rest and calculating the odds of his running himself into the ground again, literally, if he keeps going. Link waits, for a moment, while she doesn't.

Zelda strokes her fingers slowly down Link's side, and he's never been particularly ticklish but this time he feels a terrible urge to squirm. Groose falls into a sudden coughing fit, somewhere behind him, and Link hears the scuffing of his boots on the stones.

Zelda is silent and her face tight and Link doesn't know what she's searching so intently for. Then she sighs, slumping a little and taking her hand back. "You're okay," she murmurs. "You're just fine, Link."

She meets his eyes, and Link smiles back at her.

And then Zelda smacks her fist against his shoulder. "Goddess take you, Link, don't scare me like that!" she says. "I thought my heart was going to stop!"

Link chuckles, even though Zelda hits really hard and he already hurts, because he's missed her furious, stubborn face. He's missed _her_.

Zelda freezes for a moment, and lowers her fist, and then she places her hand on the ground and bends over to kiss his cheek softly. "Thank you," she whispers against his ear, "for being okay."

She lies down beside him, her hand in his, and they watch the clouds in the distant blue sky-like they're children again-until they can make out the dark, wheeling shapes of Loftwings against the white.


	5. Neck kiss (Skyward Sword)

Disclaimer: I don't own _The Legend of Zelda_.

**10: Neck Kiss  
**_(Skyward Sword, post-game, young married stupid couple, they probably still like having knights on the surface right)_

The first things to go are the boots. Zelda pauses just long enough to kick them off in the doorway while she grapples with her belt buckles. Sword belt, tunic belt, pouch slung across her hip-all these are dumped a little less than ceremoniously beside the door with her boots. With that out of the way, Zelda crosses her arms and grabs the hem of her violet knight's tunic and shucks it off, and the chain mail lands in a heap on the floor soon after.

The pants stay. Zelda can't kick off her pants and hop-shuffle across the room at the same time after a night's patrol. Not unless she's suddenly become very fond of bruises.

She hasn't.

Link is on Zelda's side of the bed, the side where she's not trapped against the wall and where she doesn't have to climb over him in the mornings. Link isn't supposed to be on Zelda's side of the bed. Link isn't supposed to be in bed at all, considering he's on duty to help Knight Commander Eagus with morning training right about now, but Link's never been good with sticking to a tidy sleep schedule, so Zelda's not all that surprised.

She's kind of surprised he managed to make it as far as sitting up and swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and pulling his shirt on, backwards, before dozing off. His head's bowed and lolling against his shoulder, and the rest of him is starting to slouch over after it.

Well. Since he's already late, Zelda plops herself down between his legs. The back of her head bumps into his nose and startles him upright with a jerk.

"Mm, morning, sleepyhead," she says. She grabs his wrist and sticks her hairbrush in his hand before she begins tugging the ribbons out of her hair. No matter how Zelda binds the ends of her hair and wraps them up so it won't whip freely in her face, somehow flying always manages to make her straight hair into a mess of hidden snarls.

Link stares at the brush in his hand for a long moment, still half-asleep and ruffling his free hand through his hair. Then he presses his face against the back of Zelda's head and closes his eyes, like rolling over and snuggling up and going back to bed, because her hair's soft and it smells nice.

Zelda drops the last of the ribbons somewhere on the blankets-or maybe somewhere on the floor-and chuckles, trying to duck away from his dead weight. "Link! You're not helping," she says, and she tosses her hair back over her shoulder.

Link does want to help, though, really. So he sits up and grips the hairbrush in his hand and figures she means for him to comb it through her hair. Ends first, the way Zelda showed him, teasing out the knots and working his way up.

He smooths his fingers over her hair in the wake of the brush, because he likes the silky feel.

Zelda likes that too. Link works slowly, and gently, and thoroughly, and the repetitive strokes over the sections of her hair that are already knot-free are soothing. Zelda nods her head and closes her eyes, and she could fall asleep right here.

Which is selfish, because Eagus will be wondering when Link is going to turn up, and she's distracting him and keeping him later than he already is. But Zelda's okay with being selfish sometimes.

She rests her hands on Link's legs and squeezes his knees. His thighs are warm against her. The blankets on her side of the bed are going to be all cozy from the pair of them sitting there, when she lets Link up and reminds him to finish getting dressed and grab something to eat and get his cute butt out the door before she curls up under the covers and gets some sleep.

Zelda isn't letting Link up yet, though. Instead she's rubbing her thumbs in the small hollows at the inside of his knees.

Not that Link's trying to get up, either. He's combed all the tangles out of Zelda's hair by now, but he keeps brushing and letting her hair run through his fingers. The touches feel nice against her shoulders. Maybe she's a little stiff from flying around on patrol.

Link gathers her hair up and begins brushing it to the side, all over one shoulder, leaving her neck bare. Zelda smiles and hums under her breath, tightening her fingers.

"I hope you're planning something," she says.

He tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear and sweeps it across her neck and over her shoulder with the rest. Then he pulls the brush along the side of her head. Link doesn't think he's planning anything. He just wants to make sure he's got all the knots combed out. And Zelda's making noises like Mia purring, only not as rumble-y, so he thought she must like this.

Zelda can feel her nose crinkling up as her smile stretches. "You dope," she mumbles. "How about you kiss me."

Link runs his fingertips along her shoulder again, because her hair keeps trying to slip away and fall across her back. Then he leans in and kisses her bare neck. He rests his lips against her skin, gentle and lingering, like he's burying his nose in her hair again. His arms wrap loosely around Zelda's waist, and he breathes, and each slow exhale is hot against her neck and each slow inhale sends prickling shivers down her spine.

Knight Commander Eagus is a perfectly capable instructor, and an earnest man, and Zelda's sure he'll understand if Link turns out to be unfortunately, terribly ill today.


	6. Firm kiss (Skyward Sword)

Disclaimer: I don't own _The Legend of Zelda_.

I tweaked the game dialogue to serve my own purposes, yes, shame on me.

(Originally the plan for this fic was a presumably lethal dose of ridiculously sappy fluff, but then this happened instead _go figure_.)

**5: Firm Kiss  
**_(Skyward Sword, post-game-epilogue fic, or How Zelda Once Again Completely Failed To Tell Link About Her Feels)_

It's as simple as this: Zelda has to do it.

The weather's so nice, and Link's just saved the world from utter devastation. Her father's wandered off to _ooh_ and _aah_ and examine the remains of the Temple of Hylia, and Groose and his buddies are winging their way back to Skyloft. And Zelda and Link are alone together atop the Statue of the Goddess.

Again.

So, Zelda has to. No excuses. Everything is over now, and the world is safe, and no one is dead or maimed, and she hasn't got any more emotional manipulation up her flowing white sleeves to get in the way of finally, _finally_ telling Link how she feels.

So she has to kiss him this time. Has to. She's the goddess Hylia reborn. Heck, she's _Zelda_, and she crawled clear through a monster-infested temple with nothing more than a harp and a long white dress and a pair of ridiculously fancy sandals. She shouldered destiny and put her faith in Link and closed her eyes without any guarantee that his desperately terrified face wouldn't be the last thing she ever saw.

Zelda is wise and powerful and courageous and she's certainly brave enough to tell a dumb boy, her best friend forever, that she _likes him_ likes him.

All she has to do is step straight into his personal space bubble, just like the last time the two of them stood together alone atop the Statue of the Goddess-and then close the distance between her mouth and his before she wusses out again. Easy as pie.

Zelda glances over at Link, who's just standing beside her strumming that stupid harp, and he went through trials upon trials and all kinds of hell and probably nearly got himself killed who knows how many times just to bring her back, and he hasn't made a single move even to hug her and weep a few manly tears of relief-that was all Groose-and she nearly loses her nerve.

No. She can't keep backing down. No, it has to be that Link is just denser than the rocks in the sky. She should've known better than to imagine Link would pick up any clues from all those romantic novels she made him borrow. He's just plain not good at figuring out to make the first move. That's always been Zelda's specialty.

Zelda takes a deep breath.

"I... I think I want to live here," she blurts out.

Well.

Well, that's another conversation Zelda's been agonizing over having to explain to Link and her father-but it's decidedly not The Three Little Words. And it sure as heck isn't kissing Link until even that water dragon scale can't help him hold his breath any longer. And Link's not fiddling with the harp anymore and he's looking at her and her mind has gone into a kind of roaring blank of panic oh shoot shoot shoot what is she supposed to-

"I mean, just look around us! You know, as a child I always dreamed about a world below," Zelda rambles, forging ahead and desperately trying not to think. "I wanted to see the surface with my own eyes, feel the land's warm breeze on my skin. Now I always want to feel this solid ground beneath my feet, and look up at the clouds overhead, and guard the Triforce."

She knits her fingers together, and waits for a couple of thundering heartbeats, and Link is waiting too and still listening expectantly. So she forces on a smile and asks, "What about you, Link? What will you do now?"

Zelda wants him to say he's going to stay here too. Or kiss her. She wants Link to say that he wants to live with her always by stepping forward and kissing her. And then it will be a perfect happy ending and a huge weight off her shoulders and it won't matter if she's lost her nerve and she's as tense and frozen as a statue and isn't that a thing that would be considered irony right now.

Link stares for a moment longer, and then Zelda sees the gears start grinding, and finally catch, _praise the Goddess_, and his face brightens-

And Link's heading back to Skyloft.

Zelda blinks, and her smile is still there but it doesn't feel like it's on quite straight anymore. She watches Link step to the edge of the statue and scan the sky for his Loftwing. "What?" she says. "What do you mean-why?"

Link means he's flying back up to Skyloft now, since the evil is sealed and Zelda is awake and okay.

The thing is: even though he didn't know it would happen when he wished on the Triforce, it's kind of entirely Link's fault that he dropped the isle of the Goddess Statue out of the sky and sent it crashing clear down to the surface. And, see, that other incident which was _also_ kind of entirely Link's fault-when he accidentally dropped Pumm's chandelier from the ceiling and crashed it into the floor of the Lumpy Pumpkin-Link had to do a lot of chores to make up for the damage. And an entire island's got to be worth way more chores than a fancy chandelier.

So Link should probably own up to that and get a start on his chores as soon as possible.

Zelda stares at his back. Zelda's had a very trying day. This is what she'll tell herself later-that she has had a very trying day, and her emotions have been wrung more thoroughly than Gondo's mother's laundry.

She steps into Link's personal space bubble, all according to plan.

And then Zelda shoves him right off the edge of the statue.

"_Argh!_ Link, I cannot believe you're so incredibly _dense!_" she yells down after him.

Link manages to get the harp tucked back in his bag and whip out the sailcloth as he falls. He's had a lot of practice with this kind of thing, so he only stumbles a little on the landing. He doesn't manage to see how Zelda followed him down, because by the time he's got himself righted she's already there in front of him.

Link kind of wants to pull his head back a little, because it's instinct, because Zelda's face is right in his, and he's discovered thanks to Ghirahim that he actually _does_ have a latent sense of personal space after all-except Zelda's hands are cupping the back of his head and keeping him from jerking away.

Zelda closes the distance between their faces and presses her mouth over Link's. She holds him in place, and kisses him hard enough to break through the clouds of obliviousness that his head's perpetually floating in, and she doesn't let him go even after she pulls away.

"Do you have _any_ idea _how long_ I've been wanting to do that?" she demands.

Link blinks at her for a moment. He doesn't, actually.

Actually, Link had no idea she wanted to do that at all.

Zelda wants to shove him again, but what she does instead is kiss him. Kissing Link is easier the second time around. It's a _lot_ easier, actually, and Zelda laces her fingers together and slides her hands down to cradle the back of his neck, and she wonders why her past self was such a darn wuss that she never got up the nerve to corner Link in a closet ages ago.

"I've been wanting to do this since even longer than _hundreds of years_," she mumbles against Link's mouth. "And I know you're a quick study so you better start kissing me back."

He does, and thank the Goddess, it's all worth it.


End file.
